


Revelations

by Kalael



Series: Hold your hand 'til the colors fade [5]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1398346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalael/pseuds/Kalael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’d remember before then.  We still know our way around the stars, for the most part.  We would find a way.  We have eternity, Koz, we may as well make use of it.”  Jack pushed as though this reasoning would make light of their suffering, every year of it, counting into their thousands.</p><p> </p><p>It wasn't a new idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelations

Kozmotis awoke to the feeling of cool fingers tracing patterns over his back, a ragged nail catching occasionally on the bumps of his vertebrae. He squinted groggily at the shape beside him and white hair came into sight before lips pressed lightly over his own.

“Surprised you’re still here.” Kozmotis murmured, his voice rough and barely audible. Jack hummed noncommittally and continued to draw patterns along Kozmotis’ skin. He smoothed his palms against warm skin, reveling in the way Kozmotis involuntarily tensed at the cold, then leaned down to kiss the back of Kozmotis’ neck. The light was filtering through the curtains in pale streaks, a sign that the sun had just barely risen. Jack didn’t wake up early by choice but he could never sleep straight through the night. He stared at the window for a long time, drawing Kozmotis’ attention.

“How much time do you think we have?” Jack asked suddenly, and Kozmotis knew he wasn’t speaking of immediate concerns. Even when Jack stayed in, they could never have normal pillow talk. They could never talk about work, or what to have for lunch, or whose turn it was to do the laundry.

“Don’t dwell on it.” Kozmotis said, rolling over and taking Jack’s hands in his own. Their palms were about the same size, but Jack’s fingers were thinner and Kozmotis’ were longer. Kozmotis curled his fingers over Jack’s, as though he could trap them there.

“I’m not.” Jack easily pulled his hands away and prepared to get out of bed, but before he could get very far Kozmotis grabbed his elbow and pulled him gently back. Jack sighed as Kozmotis’ arms came around him, not so much caging him as keeping him stable. It felt nice, but the discussion they were leading up to wasn’t one that Jack wanted to have.

“It’s not like you to worry about this. Usually it’s the other way around.” It wasn’t phrased as a question but the concern was there. Jack squirmed against Kozmotis to get him to loosen his arms, and once there was enough room he turned to look him in the eyes.

“You’re the sort of guy that just worries constantly. Can’t help it if that rubs off on me, you know?” Kozmotis felt his lips lift briefly and Jack snorted when he noticed, shaking his head with a fond expression. “Just like my shitty, dirty jokes seem to be rubbing off on you. Don’t worry about it, okay? It was just a nightmare.”

“The one about Babylon?” It was a nightmare Jack had frequently, a nightmare of war and brutality that Jack refused to call a flashback. Kozmotis briefly wondered if it was possible to have PTSD from a past life, but was distracted when Jack shook his head.

“Yes. But a new one, too, after that. More modern, probably...probably the life before this one.” That would explain the odd mood. Kozmotis shut his eyes for a moment, recalling the brief pain of a gunshot wound to his head and the darkness that came after.

“I died first, that time. I remember.” He murmured, and Jack gave him an incredulous look.

“You were murdered. And you remember that? Being murdered?” His voice cracked and he glanced away, ashamed of his emotional reaction to something long past. Kozmotis gently dug his fingers into the small of Jack’s back, just hard enough to get him to look him in the eyes again.

“I died in the hospital, Jack. I wasn’t in much pain, and it wasn’t murder. Cops are shot all the time in the line of duty, you know.” A robbery gone wrong and a lucky shot, that’s all it had been. Kozmotis never looked for the papers, never sought the details. He had learned long ago that seeking closure for his past lives would only bring up more memories, more pain, and more death. Jack had yet to realize that, with his insatiable curiosity and his incredible capacity for guilt and self hatred.

“I don’t want you to be a cop again. Ever.” Jack hissed. Kozmotis tried to smile but it cracked and slipped from his lips at the vehement expression on Jack’s face.

“Well I’m not now, am I?” He said, trying to soothe Jack.

“What about next time?” Jack insisted.

“I won’t be.” Jack shook his head at Kozmotis’ quick response, his hands shaking as he placed them on Kozmotis’ face. His fingers traced the area that he remembered differently in a past life, a bloody, bandaged mess in a hospital room and then a swollen, stitched gash hidden beneath the mortician’s makeup and framed by a casket.

“You won’t remember. How many times do both of us remember? It’s not enough.” Jack hadn’t remembered in the last life. Kozmotis had only fragments then, barely formed memories of a white haired boy he knew that he needed to protect. They’d chalked it up to fate and hadn’t looked any deeper. Kozmotis couldn’t make that mistake again.

“I won’t be a cop again, Jack. I’m hoping there won’t even be a next time. I want this to be the end of the cycle.” Kozmotis tightened his arms when Jack froze in his grip. They stared at each other, barely breathing as they considered the possibility of breaking the curse. Jack began to laugh. It was an unpleasant, sad sound that had Kozmotis pressing his forehead to Jack’s in attempt to calm him without words.

“The cycle doesn’t just end. The curse isn’t just...over, because we want it to be. We’re only in our twenties, now. We might have another twenty years, or maybe even fifty, or maybe I’ll die next week. It’s never over.” Jack’s voice was soft and his words were defeated, belying their true age hiding beneath that youthful face. Kozmotis remembered seeing him old, seeing him malnourished and marked with scars. His own voice hardened.

“We could end it. We could be happy.” He said, and Jack was shaking his head before the last word even left his mouth.

“It won’t end. And isn’t it better if it doesn’t? We have eternity to see each other. We’ll meet every century until the end of time.” It was an exaggeration. Jack was grasping at straws— he knew their timelines never fell so perfectly as that. But it was better than nothing, wasn’t it? It was better to have fragmented immortality and everlasting love than the uncertainty of a permanent death. Kozmotis took Jack’s face in his hands, his fingers trembling as he tried not to grip too tightly. Jack’s own hands had retreated to Kozmotis’ shoulders, where they dug into his shirt when Kozmotis kissed him.

“And what happens when the curse extends to more than just the earth?” Kozmotis broke the kiss to ask. Jack leaned in to kiss him again, to shut him up, but Kozmotis pulled back and continued. “What happens when we’re returned to the stars, Jack? You wandered for three hundred years before I met you for the first time. It could be a millennium between meetings.”

“We’d remember before then. We still know our way around the stars, for the most part. We would find a way. We have eternity, Koz, we may as well make use of it.” Jack pushed as though this reasoning would make light of their suffering, every year of it, counting into their thousands.

“And spend that eternity watching one another die? Over and over again I’ve seen you old, tired, sick, even horribly killed. Do you remember London?” Bombs in the night, flaring oranges and reds and the searing pain of shrapnel. Jack’s eyes flickered shut, just for a second, enough for Kozmotis to know that Jack was feeling himself die the way a phantom limb aches unbearably in the space where it no longer exists.

“Of course I remember London. I don’t regret dying to save you.” Jack said, resolute. Kozmotis held back a sigh.

“I regret that you ever have to die at all. We could have lived for hundreds of years if the curse…” Jack cut him off with a frantic wave of a hand, nearly swatting Kozmotis across the face.

“We can’t keep doing this.” He blurted. He didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to dream up some half-assed scheme for a life that didn’t end in tragedy. It would always end that way no matter how hard they tried, someone would die and the other would be alone and that would be that.

“That’s why I want to break the cycle.” Kozmotis responded evenly. They’d had this conversation before. Not in their current life, not that he could remember, but in others they’d certainly discussed it. Jack grimaced, felt his lips pull into words he’d repeated some centuries ago.

“No. We can’t keep seeking each other out. We can’t keep hurting ourselves this way. I can’t keep doing this.” It wasn’t a solution. It wouldn’t fix anything. They both knew that Jack was just desperate.

“So, what? You’re breaking up with me?” Kozmotis asked, mostly sarcastic. There was a bit of real fear, a quiet sense of terror because it had happened before and it would happen again.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I just think we should keep away from each other in the next life. Maybe the distance will do us some good.” Jack tried to sound sincere but instead his voice trembled, weak, his fingers skittering across Kozmotis’ cheekbones.

“You’re an idiot if you think that will work. We’ve had distance plenty of times. You’ve been born across the world from me, you know, you’ve spent lives in Malaysia where I’ve been in Greenland. Distance never did us any good.” They both fell quiet, just watching the way the sunlight fell over each other’s faces. None of it was new to them. None of it sent butterflies into panic in their stomachs or made their hearts beat wildly. They’d done it before and they would do it again, and again, and again.

“It’s not a new idea.” Jack murmured. They pressed their foreheads together, Kozmotis’ feverishly warm skin against Jack’s chilled brow, and they breathed shallowly.

“The sun will burn out before we do.” Kozmotis shut his eyes, the imprints of supernovas on the insides of his eyelids.

“We could end it.” Jack’s voice was a tentative whisper. Kozmotis shook his head.

“Isn’t it better this way?” He threw Jack’s reasoning back at him, watched the way his expression twisted into something ugly and sad.

They had argued like this before. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t a thought that had occurred to them that life, or even the one before it. They knew one another’s arguments intimately because they had shared them countless times.

Jack’s fingers brushed over the places where Kozmotis’ scars used to be.

"How much time do you think we have?" He wondered aloud, asking the same question that had started their argument in the first place. Kozmotis didn't answer for a long time, his eyes shut as the sunlight grew brighter through the curtains.

"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." He said, finally. Jack recoiled from him, swearing loudly as he almost fell from the bed.

"We don't deal in prophecies." He announced, his tone accusing, and Kozmotis opened one eye to examine him.

"It's just biblical shit. I know this is what you've been thinking about, and my point is that this isn't Babylon. We don't know what will happen. We can't know. So stop worrying and come back to bed, because this _isn't Babylon_ , and you can sleep." Kozmotis held the sheets up, and Jack hesitated before crawling back under them and curling against his side.

Kozmotis waited for Jack to fall asleep, listening for his deep breathing and the occasional sigh of content. When he knew for sure that Jack would not wake up, he traced the unmarked patches of skin where Jack's own scars used to be, nightmares of Babylon and memories of a soothsayer who told him to be wary of a white haired boy.

He couldn't help but laugh. He'd known before she'd spoken to him that his death would be caused by that boy.

Just as he knew now that he would die for Jack again.

It wasn't a new idea, after all.


End file.
